Tumblr Takes One Small Step for Brands

Tumblr CEO David Karp was once scornful of advertisers. Now the company is embracing them.

European Pressphoto Agency

Tumblr, the youth-skewing blogging service that is now owned by Yahoo, is growing up a bit.

The company is rolling out new tools to help ad people better understand how people are spending time with brands’ Tumblr pages, and compare that to performance of corporate messages on Facebook, YouTube or other popular digital services.

Tumblr’s new analysis tools are an important ingredient in making it a hospitable home for advertising–which CEO David Karp once famously said “turns our stomachs.” (That was in 2010. More recently, Karp said this summer that he was “in awe” of marketers.)

So far, Tumblr hasn’t prioritized selling ads, and it shows. The company’s revenue was $13 million last year, or less than 1% of Facebook revenue in the latest quarter. Putting more data in marketers’ hands is another sign of how Tumblr is getting serious about making money since its $1.1 billion sale agreement with Yahoo three months ago.

Tumblr had taken steps for about a year to become more marketer-friendly, but advertisers say Yahoo sale was a watershed moment in marketers’ interest in Tumblr, and vice versa.

Since the Yahoo deal, Tumblr “has been more welcoming” to brands, said Ian Schafer, founder and CEO of digital-marketing firm Deep Focus. “You don’t feel you’re walking into a demilitarized zone anymore.”

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has pledged not to ruin Tumblr’s cred with the more than 300 million people who surf Tumblr pages each month. But her pledge not to “screw it up” could be at odds with pressures on Yahoo to turn its new services into money makers.

Tumblr’s new data tools, part of a partnership with analytics firms Simply Measured and Gnip, would allow a company like Coca-Cola to see how often a photo it posts on Tumblr is shared (or “reblogged” in the Tumblr parlance), and by which Tumblr users. Coca-Cola also could compare that with how much the same photo is shared on Instagram or Twitter.

Tumblr said Deep Focus, who works with Pepsi and Purina, and Adidas are among the marketing firms or brands using the new analysis tools.